Spring line settlements occur where a ridge of
permeable rock lies over impermeable rock, resulting in a line of
springs along the contact between the two layers. Spring line (or springline) settlements will sometimes form around these springs, becoming villages.
In each case to build higher up the hill would have meant difficulties with water supply; to build lower would have taken the settlement further away from useful grazing land or nearer to the
floodplain
A floodplain or flood plain or bottomlands is an area of land adjacent to a river. Floodplains stretch from the banks of a river channel to the base of the enclosing valley, and experience flooding during periods of high Discharge (hydrolog ...
.
Spring line villages are often the principal settlements in
strip parishes, with long, narrow
parish
A parish is a territorial entity in many Christianity, Christian denominations, constituting a division within a diocese. A parish is under the pastoral care and clerical jurisdiction of a priest#Christianity, priest, often termed a parish pries ...
boundaries stretching up to the top of the ridge and down to the river but being narrow in the direction of adjacent spring line villages.
Some examples in England
* To the north and south of the
Howardian Hills in the
North Riding of Yorkshire.
* To the west and east of the ridge that extends south from
Lincoln and on top of which is the
Roman road Ermine Street. The western line (which includes
Boothby Graffoe and
Navenby) is close under the escarpment; the eastern line (which includes
Metheringham) is as much as away from the crest of the ridge.
* To the south of
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
and difficult to identify among the continuous housing development of later centuries, there are:
Ewell (a derivative of the
Old English
Old English ( or , or ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the Early Middle Ages. It developed from the languages brought to Great Britain by Anglo-S ...
''Et Welle''),
Cheam,
Sutton,
Carshalton
Carshalton ( ) is a town, with a historic village centre, in south London, England, within the London Borough of Sutton. It is situated around southwest of Charing Cross and around east by north of Sutton town centre, in the valley of the Rive ...
,
Wallington,
Beddington,
Waddon,
Croydon
Croydon is a large town in South London, England, south of Charing Cross. Part of the London Borough of Croydon, a Districts of England, local government district of Greater London; it is one of the largest commercial districts in Greater Lond ...
,
Addiscombe,
Elmers End and
Beckenham. Road and place names to the north of the line provide evidence that that area was relatively uninhabited: Cheam
Common
Common may refer to:
As an Irish surname, it is anglicised from Irish Gaelic surname Ó Comáin.
Places
* Common, a townland in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland
* Boston Common, a central public park in Boston, Massachusetts
* Cambridge Com ...
,
Sutton Common,
Thornton Heath, and
Norwood (a derivative of ''North Wood'').
* Below the northern
escarpment of the
South Downs are villages such as
Edburton,
Fulking and
Poynings.
[Humphery-Smith (2003) Map 34]
* In the
Vale of the White Horse (now in
Oxfordshire
Oxfordshire ( ; abbreviated ''Oxon'') is a ceremonial county in South East England. The county is bordered by Northamptonshire and Warwickshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the east, Berkshire to the south, and Wiltshire and Glouceste ...
, formerly in
Berkshire
Berkshire ( ; abbreviated ), officially the Royal County of Berkshire, is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Oxfordshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the north-east, Greater London ...
), villages such as
East Ginge, West Ginge,
Letcombe Bassett,
Childrey and
Woolstone are at the top of wooded valleys below
the Ridgeway on the north-facing scarp slope.
* In
East Anglia, spring line settlements such as
Burwell, Cambridgeshire,
Swaffham Prior and
Cherry Hinton mark the fen edge and are close to the probable Lower
Icknield Way.
* In
Somerset
Somerset ( , ), Archaism, archaically Somersetshire ( , , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel, Gloucestershire, and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east ...
, at the foot of the southwestern escarpment of the largely limestone
Mendip Hills, the settlements of
Draycott,
Rodney Stoke,
Westbury-sub-Mendip,
Easton,
Wookey Hole, and
Wells. At the northern foot of the Mendip Hills,
Burrington,
Blagdon,
Ubley,
Compton Martin,
West Harptree,
East Harptree, and
Chewton Mendip. By contrast there are very few settlements on Mendip itself, with only
Priddy within the Mendip Hills
National Landscape.
See also
*
Fall line
References
Sources
*{{cite book , last=Humphery-Smith , first=Cecil , authorlink=Cecil Humphery-Smith , title=The Phillimore Atlas & Index of Parish Registers , year=2003 , edition=3rd , publisher=
Phillimore & Co. Ltd , location=Chichester , isbn=1-86077-239-0
Human geography